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Diversity Announcements

5 November 2018

31 October 2018

2017 CiteScore™ metrics autumn update released

An update for 2017 CiteScore™ data has just been released, based on citation data in the Scopus® database as of October 2018. The CiteScores reflect citation activity in 2017 for articles published in 2014‒2016. Please note that the list below includes journals assigned a CiteScore in this year’s release. For a full list of journals indexed in Scopus, please see our journal list.

30 October 2018

Institutional Open Access Agreement between Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and MDPI

We are delighted to announce that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is now a participant of our Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP). Authors funded by the BMGF can enjoy discounts on the APC, while the funder covers the costs of eligible articles centrally. BMGF also has access to the MDPI online submission system where they can find full article metadata and pricing information as well as Grant ID details for easy identification and additional transparency.

We hope that funded authors find the programme beneficial and we are happy to offer our IOAP to other funders that need a streamlined workflow of compliance checking and APC coverage.

To claim their discount, BMGF funded authors should choose the particular funder and add their Grant ID upon online submission of their manuscript.

2 October 2018

MDPI Welcomes Plan S

Recently, it was announced that a group of European funders supported 10 principles that will help to expand open access, known as Plan S. MDPI warmly welcomes this move as a step towards achieving more open and accessible communication of research across all disciplines. Some aspects remain to be clarified, however the details given so far match the aims and values that MDPI has held over the past two decades.

We believe that open access publishers should be active participants in discussions around Plan S, particularly regarding potential new business models and practical aspects of implementation. MDPI supports APCs as a transparent unit of payment for article publishing, however we are committed to exploring other measures and recently signed the Jussieu Call. Sustainability is a key value for MDPI, and future funding models should have at their heart the sustainability of knowledge and research dissemination. Plan S provides an opportunity for funders and publishers to directly discuss funding of open access journals in ways that are beneficial to all parties involved.

30 August 2018

MDPI establishes Open Access agreement with Qatar National Library

We are happy to announce the establishment of an Open Access (OA) agreement with Qatar National Library (QNL). QNL is committed to supporting and helping Qatar authors publish OA at no cost. Through this national agreement, QNL will cover the Article Processing Charges (APC) of manuscripts published by Qatar-based corresponding authors in MDPI journals.

Eligible corresponding authors affiliated with Qatar research centers and universities are prompted to choose QNL as part of our Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) when they submit an article via our online submission system. The program will be selected automatically if authors submit their papers using their institutional email and/or a computer registered with the institution’s IP range. QNL will then crosscheck the information and confirm the APC funding.

Qatar authors that have their APC covered by QNL are advised to include the following sentence in their acknowledgments: "The publication of this article was funded by Qatar National Library".

31 May 2018

Diversity 2017 CiteScore™ Announced - 2.15

We are pleased to report Diversity received a CiteScore of 2.15 for 2017. The metric reflects citation activity in 2017 in Scopus for papers published in the period 2014‒2016.

For the full details in the current CiteScore release, please see the journal's Source profile. To check the full list of MDPI journals receiving CiteScores, please see here.

31 May 2018

2017 CiteScore™ Metrics Released

The 2017 CiteScore™ data is available now, based on citation data in the Scopus® database. The current CiteScore reflects citation activity in 2017 for articles published in 2014‒2016. Please note that the list below includes journals assigned a CiteScore in this year’s release. For a full list of journals indexed in Scopus, please see our journal list.

Thirteen of our journals received a CiteScore which is in the top 10% of the distribution in at least one of the categories (marked with * in the table below), while a further 32 journals exhibit scores that are in the first quartile of the respective categories.

Unlike CiteScores and the widely used Journal Impact Factors, the Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) metrics are normalized in order to correct for differences in citation practices between scientific fields. Therefore, the SNIP allows direct comparison between journals specialized in different fields.

According to 2017 data, MDPI publishes six journals with an average citation impact, or SNIP, in excess of 1.500. These journals are Biomolecules, Cancers, Journal of Clinical Medicine (JCM), Marine Drugs, Remote Sensing and Sensors (see the last column in the table below).

30 April 2018

Winners of the First MDPI Writing Prize

We are pleased to announce the results of the first MDPI Writing Prize. We received a large number of entries from across the globe on the theme of “The Global Benefits of Open Research”. It was a pleasure to read so many original, well-researched and well-presented ideas, and the final choice was not an easy one. We are pleased to announce that the winners are as follows:

27 April 2018

Meet Us at the 2018 ESA, ESC, and ESBC Joint Annual Meeting

We will be attending the 2018 ESA, ESC, and ESBC Joint Annual Meeting (Entomology 2018) in Vancouver, Canada from November 11 to 14, 2018. The Entomological Society of America (ESA) is the largest organization serving the professional and scientific needs of entomologists and individuals in related disciplines from around the world. This Annual Meeting offers unique opportunities to share your research, gain exposure, and collaborate across border and across these three Societies. Connect with over 3,000 scientists and researchers from around the globe over the four science-filled days. Representatives of the following MDPI open access journals will attend:

If you are attending this conference, please stop by our booth (Booth #407). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions you may have concerning open access publishing and our journals.

23 March 2018

Check for Updates: A New Function in the Article PDF Version

At MDPI, we always want to keep you up to date. Even for already published articles, some corrections or minor changes may occur. To prevent you from missing any updates, from now on you will be able to access the latest version of any manuscript by clicking on the “check for updates” logo that you can find in the PDF file, even if you have saved the file on your computer.

15 March 2018

Congratulations to Eleven Journals for Publishing the Tenth Volume in 2018

We would like to send warm wishes from the Editors-in-Chief of these journals and look to the future. Acknowledgement of our past achievements provides the strongest stimulus for future endeavor.

To date, the journal Cancers has published more than 1000 papers and will receive its first impact factor in June. This milestone could not be achieved without our readers, authors, peer reviewers, editors, and all the people working for the journal who, for years, have contributed their tremendous efforts.

Ten years is a long time but a short period for a new journal. When we started Diversity 10 years ago, we had hoped that a journal with such a broad coverage of topics would attract potential authors and good contributions. We are very satisfied that our vision became reality.Today, Diversity is home to interesting studies on different aspects of diversity mainly in biology, ranging from systematics, phylogeny and evolution, to ecology, biodiversity and conservation issues. I am confident that the next 10 years will witness the further growth of Diversity both in quality and quantity.

Ten years have passed from the foundation of the “Future Internet” MDPI journal. We have witnessed the positive evolution of our journal, with ever-increasing interest from potential authors. The increasing fundamental eco-systemic importance of the journal’s subjects has also had positive effects. Therefore, the journal is currently evolving to cope with the increasing interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary views.Past achievements and future prospects give us reason to celebrate ten years since the journal’s foundation. We will also set up a commemorative Special Issue.

It is with great pride that Nutrients enters its 10th year of publication. Through the hard work and dedication of its Editorial Board, journal staff, and individuals who have unselfishly given their time to peer-review manuscripts, the journal has grown to become a leading publisher of nutrition research. During this 10th Anniversary year of Nutrients, I would like to take the opportunity to thank all who have contributed to the journal during its first decade.

I am pleased and honored to celebrate the first decade of Pharmaceutics, as the founding Editor-in-Chief. This is also an opportunity for me to thank our authors, readers, reviewers, and editorial board members for their continuous support. We will receive our first impact factor in June 2018, in recognition of the great efforts made in the past ten years. We shall strive to improve the journal in the next ten years.

Since its foundation in 2009, Polymers has evolved into an internationally renowned and successful Open Access journal. The core concept, namely that Open Access publishing can stand for high-quality publications, is working well. On a daily basis, ever since the journal’s foundation, the editorial team and the editorial board dedicate themselves to ensuring a high-quality rigorous peer-review process: only 30 to 50% of the submissions will be published in Polymers. This strategy been complemented by, among other features, the increasing impact factor of Polymers, the most recent one being 3.364. On the occasion of Polymers’ 10th anniversary, we would like to thank all authors who have contributed to the success of the journal by submitting their high-quality research papers. We look forward to your continuous support and the continued growth of the journal in the next decade.

MDPI’s Open Access journal Remote Sensing is now one of the top international scientific journal 's in remote sensing science. Well known scientists in the subject, from all over the world, publish in it on a regular basis. It has an outstanding and dedicated editorial team, editorial office, and reviewers. We pride ourselves on publishing high-quality original scientific articles. Our goal remains to become # 1 Journal in Remote Sensing Science.

The tenth anniversary of Sustainability is a momentous milestone, and it has been a privilege for me to be a part of it as Editor-in-Chief. This anniversary demonstrates the growing interest in and recognition of the importance of sustainability. The journal has been able to showcase the many advances made over the last decade in the thinking, methods and applications surrounding sustainability. Recently, the content of the journal has reflected the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that was adopted by the United Nations in September 2015. Sustainability has had a notable impact and expects to have an even greater impact over its next decade through publishing research on new advances in sustainability and fostering critical discussion.

Our journal Symmetry celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2018. During the last 10 years, the journal has become one of the leading journals among all multi-science journals. This shows the fundamental role played by the symmetries of nature in natural science. This also reflects the huge number of researchers whose work relates to symmetry. We hope to achieve even better results in the coming years.

It is my honor as Editor-in-Chief of Toxins to inaugurate the 10th anniversary of the journal’s inception. From the founding EIC, Professor Florian Lang and EIC Vernon Tesh and the many Section EICs and Editorial Board Members, the combined leadership of this effort to provide an outstanding vehicle for the dissemination of the results of high-quality scientific investigations and in-depth, insightful comprehensive reviews has resulted in the flagship journal of toxinology as we know it today. The publication metrics associated with Toxins support this claim by virtue of our increase in manuscript submissions and publications and annual citation rate of articles published in Toxins. Importantly, the impact factor for Toxins remains strong and representative of the significance of the science published in Toxins. As we progress in this anniversary year, we will celebrate the 10th anniversary with a continuation of our acclaimed travel award program for Post-Doctoral Fellows in the field of Toxinology as well as our soon to be announced “Toxins' 10th Anniversary Top Cited Researcher Award” program.Thus, 2018 will be an exciting year, celebrating the 10th anniversary of Toxins, but also a year of looking forward for the best practices by which the journal can serve the toxinology community. With that in mind, please join us in celebrating the journal by submitting your work to Toxins and as always I welcome your suggestions for the improvement of “our” journal.

Thank you to all the dedicated researchers, reviewers and editors who have made Water a success. The journal has become a popular outlet for cutting-edge research in the broad field of water science, technology, management and governance. The Open Access format has proven to be attractive, and authors highly value the quick handling of papers. After ten years, Water has become an established journal in the field.

To mark the anniversaries, we have established a Special Issue to look back over the previous decade of outstanding accomplishments and highlight innovative frontier research perspectives. We encourage you to keep an eye on the publications in this Special Issue and this journal, and hope you consider it as a venue for your future publications.

13 March 2018

MDPI Becoming a Member of UKSG

We are proud to announce that MDPI is now a member of UKSG, the UK´s largest scholarly communications community. Through UKSG, different stakeholders share their knowledge and experience in order to improve the knowledge and information environment for researchers. UKSG´s members include universities, publishers, content providers, intermediaries, and other similar organisations. Members participate in discussions and events on issues around scholarly communications.

The UKSG Annual Conference and Exhibition is a flagship initiative from the UKSG and one of the most stimulating events in the scholarly communications calendar. It is held annually and attracts a large number of delegates. More information is available at https://www.uksg.org/events/annualconference

MDPI is delighted to be a part of this active community and we look forward to making our own contribution. We will continue to support organisations and initiatives that boost collaboration and vision within scholarly communication.

1 February 2018

MDPI Signed the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA)

The DORA initiative addresses the need for advanced approaches in the evaluation and measurement of the quality of scientific research outputs. It is a worldwide initiative covering all scholarly disciplines. MDPI proudly joins a list of more than 400 organizations around the world which support DORA’s recommendations for improving the way the quality of research results is evaluated.

19 December 2017

Announcing the MDPI English Writing Prize

15 December 2017

UCL Press Adopts the MDPI Editorial Platform JAMS

We are delighted to announce that UCL Press has adopted MDPI's Journal Article & Management System, JAMS, including production services. JAMS is a modular, integrated editorial platform for academic publishers. It offers flexibility, ease-of-use, and is a fully integrated solution for the end-to-end management of scholarly journals. JAMS is based on the software used to publish MDPI’s portfolio of journals.

Ian Caswell, UCL Press Journals Manager, says he is "excited to see UCL Press and MDPI partner together to implement the JAMS submission system for all UCL Press journals. The system offered a flexible, efficient and straightforward solution for our processes from author submission to ready for publication. I am grateful for the valuable experience and support MDPI have offered and look forward to developing our programme with an effective submission system in place.” Dr Martyn Rittman, MDPI’s Publishing Services Manager, adds, “We are proud to support one of the UK’s premier university presses in their publishing operation. This is an excellent way for us at MDPI to share our experience and knowledge, and benefit the research community beyond our own journals.”

JAMS combines services that are kept separate for many publishers. The entire editorial process, production and invoicing (e.g. for open access article processing charges) are fully integrated into a single platform. This allows for efficient, fast manuscript processing. For further information about JAMS, see https://www.mdpi.com/publishing_services.

23 November 2017

New Participants in the Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP)

We are pleased to welcome new participants to MDPI's Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP), designed to help institutions manage the transition to the Open Access publishing model. Researchers affiliated with participating universites benefit from a 10% discount on the Article Processing Charges (APC) for any paper published in an MDPI journal, while the participating library or university incurs no basic fee for participating in the program.

The IOAP set of free services, provided by MDPI to institutions that sign up, include:

No fee for participants and no obligation to prolong after the initial 12 months. The participants may withdraw from the programme at any time, and we will also keep it free for the library for as long as they continue in the programme.

Authors affiliated with the university will receive a 10% discount on the APC.

The institution is granted free access to the MDPI submission system and can receive free alerts of new submissions to our journals.

By default, authors from the institution will continue to be invoiced directly unless the institution opts for central billing.

Auto-archiving of papers into the institutions´ repository as long as it supports SWORD 1.3.

10 November 2017

Available Journal Awards at MDPI

In order to reward the academic community, especially young researchers, and enhance communication among scientists, MDPI journals regularly offer various awards to researchers in specific fields, for example, Young Investigator Awards, Travel Awards, Best Paper Awards, and Best Poster Awards, etc. The awardees range from PhD students to junior scientists.

Currently, the following 44 awards given by MDPI journals are accepting applications. Please click on the award title below to check whether you are eligible for it and start the application process.

7 November 2017

MDPI has signed the Jussieu Call for Open Science and Bibliodiversity

The Jussieu Call aims to develop and implement alternative models to meet the aims of open science while promoting bibliodiversity. In particular it wishes to promote new business models for funding open access publication. It was drafted on the Jussieu campus in Paris by a group of French researchers and scientific publishing professionals.

MDPI supports scholarly communities and initiatives that innovate and further promote Open Access publishing. There is a need to explore different frameworks to fund open access in ways that ensure that excessive funds are not diverted from research towards publishing. Many fair funding models already exist, and they can be further developed and extended. These include institutional support, library contributions or subsidies, premium services, participatory funding, etc. For this reason, MDPI has signed up to the Jussieu call and welcomes its aims.

6 October 2017

Dr. Franck Vazquez, MDPI CEO, Interviewed by Scholarly Kitchen

The Society for Scholarly Publishing’s popular blog about topics in academic publishing, Scholarly Kitchen, recently interviewed MDPI’s CEO, Dr. Franck Vazquez. He shared some thoughts and information on the past and future of MDPI and open access publishing in general:

“In the long run, we aim to anchor MDPI in research communities. We recently developed and launched the preprint platform Preprints, revamped our free-to-use conference hosting platform Sciforum, and are working on other projects, such as Scilit, our bibliographic database.”

19 September 2017

A Warm Welcome to the New IOAP Participants

We are delighted to have welcomed 24 new participants to our Institutional Open Access Programme (IOAP) since the beginning of September this year. These are University libraries and Research Institutions located around the world; from the USA and Canada to the UK, and from Norway and Spain to Greece. Well respected Universities, such as the University of Denver, the University of Colorado Boulder, and the University of Arizona in the US, have signed up, while their researchers can now benefit from a 10% discount on the Article Processing Charges (APC) for any papers they publish in MDPI journals, at no cost for the library or the University.

We are more than happy to see the Open Access movement growing stronger and wider every day and we appreciate the vital role which librarians, repository managers, and other scholarly communications professionals play in the field. Our communication with and service to this community is, therefore, one of our principal priorities. The IOAP is our way to support academic and scientific Institutions as well as their scholars in managing, administrating, and publishing research in an Open Access world.

The IOAP set of free services, provided by MDPI to institutions that sign up, include:

No fee for participants and no obligation to prolong after the initial 12 months. The participants may withdraw from the programme at any time, and we will also keep it free for the library for as long as they continue in the programme.

Authors affiliated with the university will receive a 10% discount on the APC.

The institution is granted free access to the MDPI submission system and can receive free alerts of new submissions to our journals.

By default, authors from the institution will continue to be invoiced directly unless the institution opts for central billing.

Auto-archiving of papers into the institutions´ repository as long as it supports SWORD 1.3.

Evermore pressing environmental concerns have led global actors and decision-makers to search for stricter emission monitoring approaches. As part of novel monitoring systems, robots with gas and environmental sensors are a promising solution. However, validation of such robotic inspectors is expensive, time consuming, and plagued by repeatability issues. In this article, we present GADEN (the short form for Gas Dispersion Simulator for Mobile Robot Olfaction in Realistic Environments), which combines gas dispersion and robotics simulation in a common framework. Developed under the widely used Robot Operating System (ROS), GADEN enables validation of sensing strategies with gas dispersion being simulated using computational fluid dynamics and filament dispersion theory. GADEN allows simulating complex, realistic, 3D environments for reproducible testing of robotic gas sensing algorithms. Through qualitative and quantitative evaluations, we show that GADEN is a versatile and user-friendly evaluation tool and emphasize its enormous potential for the mobile robot olfaction community.

6 June 2017

CiteScore™ Metrics Released for Scopus Journals

The CiteScore, the new citation metric for journals covered in the Scopus® database, was released on 1 June 2017, reflecting the citation activity in 2016 for articles published during the three previous years. Please note that the list below does not contain all MDPI journals covered in Scopus. For the CiteScore to serve as a reliable metric at least three volumes of articles need to be indexed in Scopus; journals which have not met this criterion have been omitted here.

Ten MDPI journals received a CiteScore which is in the Top 10% of scores in at least one of the categories, while a further 21 journals exhibit scores that are in the first quartile of the respective categories.

10 May 2017

Featured Journal of the Month—Nanomaterials

We are pleased to announce the Featured Journal of this Month— Nanomaterials.

Nanomaterials is an Open Access Nanoscience & Nanotechnology Journal, published monthly by MDPI. Since it was founded in 2011, 598 articles have been published, 65 of them cited 10 times or more (h-10 index). The current Impact Factor is 2.690, and the five-year impact factor is 3.176.

4 May 2017

MDPI Supports the Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC)

As an open access publisher, we are keen to support openness and transparency in the research process. Citation data is very important for assessing the value of individual papers and the contribution of researchers. As such, we support the recently launched Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC). The initiative recognizes that citations should be freely available and machine-readable. By doing so, authors gain the maximum benefit from having their work cited.

MDPI now uploads citation data with metadata uploaded to Crossref when registering digital object identifiers (DOIs) for published papers. We are delighted to take this step to support a truly open research environment.

2 May 2017

Publons Peer Review Academy Goes Live

Getting high quality review reports is critical for any journal’s editorial process. At MDPI we have put in place several measures to motivate reviewers and reward them for their work. We are proud of the quality of reviewer reports we receive and grateful for the hours put in by active researchers from across the globe.

Reviewers of MDPI’s largest journals can get recognition via Publons, a website dedicated to rewarding peer reviewers. They have now taken this one step further and launched the Publons Reviewer Academy to help train reviewers to provide useful feedback. Through the academy, researchers can be trained and tutored in various aspects of how to provide structured feedback that will be of genuine help to editors and authors. We support this initiative and recommend it to potential MDPI reviewers, especially early career researchers. See the Publons announcement for further information.

More information on reviewing for MDPI, including how to volunteer as a reviewer, can be found here.

24 April 2017

Two New Institutional Memberships Established

We are pleased to announce that the following universities have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, USA and the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia. Primary authors from these instititions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

30 March 2017

Credit for Preprints Comments via Publons

Preprints.org is a platform run by MDPI that allows authors to make early versions of manuscripts available before peer review has been completed.

One of the major benefits of putting a preprint online is to get feedback before journal submission. Until now, however, the feedback has been on a voluntary basis. Preprints is delighted to be the first preprint server to collaborate with Publons to acknowledge substantial comments as reviews and give commentators the opportunity to receive credit for their efforts.

When you add a comment to any article, there is a check box to click for it to appear on Publons. If you have already linked your account it will be passed on automatically. If you don't already have a Publons account, you will be contacted soon afterwards with instructions on how to create one.

We appreciate the enthusiasm and cooperation of Publons in this project and expect it to be of great benefit to authors and commenters alike.

20 March 2017

MDPI 2016 Annual Report Released

We are pleased to announce that our annual report for the year 2016 has now been published.

It contains information regarding company and journal performance, conferences and other publishing services that we provided throughout 2016.

9 February 2017

Earlier this week the Science Technology Park in Belgrade, Serbia was visited by Swiss Secretary of State Dr. Mauro Dell’Ambrogio, as well as Serbian Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government Ana Brnabic, State Secretary Dr. Vladimir Popovic and Mayor of Belgrade Mr. Siniša Mali.

During the visit to the STP they had a short presentation from MDPI’s CEO Dr. Franck Vazquez and IT Manager Mr. Miloš Čučulović, and further discussed important issues such as Open Access and Open education. Dr. Dell'Ambrogio said he was impressed with the potential for development and ideas for business.

7 February 2017

The 6th World Sustainability Forum: Final Press Release

The 6th World Sustainability Forum #WSF2017SA: African universities critical to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals

Jeffrey and Sonia Sachs win first WorldSustainability Award.

Universities need to take the lead in solving the greatest challenges the world faces today, particularly in Africa. They need to do this not only through education – teaching the next generation to think critically and creatively to find sustainable solutions – but also through research that cuts across a range of disciplines. To ensure these solutions are implemented, they need to partner with the private sector and with government.

The WSF is an annual sustainability conference which addresses research in a range of areas related to sustainable development and sustainability globally. This was the first WSF to take place on the African continent. Discussions at the 2017 conference were driven by the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) adopted as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development by the UN in September 2015.

Achieving the SDGs “is the moonshot for our generation,” said Sachs. “Like the moonshot [moon landing] of the 1960s, these are tough, bold and achievable objectives.”

“This is a nasty, tough world we live in, and our world agrees on very little. So when 193 governments agree on something, that is important. And when they agree on something as important as sustainable development, that is really something for us to grab hold of – that is a lifeline.”

There was agreement at the WSF that the SDGs are particularly important for Africa, and that African universities in particular have a role to play in achieving them.

Said Professor Tyrone Pretorius, vice-chancellor of UWC: “The quest for sustainable development can only be met through education. Universities today are the oil that fuels the knowledge economy.”

As part of the drive to develop academic capacity to provide the knowledge needed to meet the SDGs, WSF2017 was preceded by the 1st Postgraduate Forum on Sustainability. “A series of workshops for postgraduate education linked to WSF are important, in order to equip postgraduates with the skills necessary to promote sustainability,” said Professor Thandi Mgwebi, director for research at UWC. A second postgraduate forum will take place alongside the WSF2018 in Beijing.

This capacity development is particularly critical to Africa. Said Sachs: “African universities need to do research to find solutions to Africa’s development challenges, because no other university will.”

The UN set a target of achieving the SDGs by 2030: “I regard this as the breakthrough period to end extreme poverty on the continent,” said Sachs, “and for Africa to become one of the most dynamic centres of the world economy.”

It is a critical time for South African universities, said Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng, deputy vice-chancellor for research and internationalisation at UCT: “Higher education is at a crossroads, and there is much polarisation. We need to think carefully about how this sustainable development agenda is owned by all so that it is inclusionary.”

There was also strong emphasis on public–private partnerships – for universities, business and government to work together to achieve the goals.

Said Professor Francis Petersen, deputy vice-chancellor at UCT and vice-chancellor designate at the University of the Free State: “Business sustainability has become critical, because there is increasing demand and complexity of demand on business from the natural, social and economic environment. Sustainability cannot be a standalone issue, divorced from business as usual. Sustainability needs to be embedded into business.”

Environmental crises and climate change was also high on the WSF agenda. In his keynote address, Sachs noted the irreversibility of the climate- and environmental-related challenges.

“If we don’t get our act together, we lose the chance of safety,” he said.

Said Professor Mark New, pro vice-chancellor and director of the African Climate and Development Initiative at UCT: “We have a fundamental challenge in responding to climate change, and we must go further than just putting a plaster on a wound. We need to address the deep structural issues, to move from our current model of development into climate-compatible development.”

“This requires researchers to find the evidence for the correct development pathways to take, and then support the ability of policymakers at all levels to enable the shift to climate-compatible development planning.”

Said Dr. Aldo Stroebel, executive director of international relations and cooperation at the NRF, in closing: “We have seen over the past two days an urgency towards the next step of thinking, that critical type of framework that we all must engage with, not only from an academic perspective, but further up into the policy environment and into rural-based environments where one can clearly see the links and effectiveness of the work.”

World Sustainability Awards

The first World Sustainability Award and the first Emerging Sustainability Leader Awards were presented by Prof. Thandi Mgwebi, Director of Research at UWC, and Dr. Franck Vazquez, CEO of MDPI, during the ceremony on 27 January 2017 as part of the gala dinner of the 6th World Sustainability Forum in South Africa.after day one of proceedings of the 2017 World Sustainability Forum South Africa.

Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs and Dr. Sonia Ehrlich Sachs are the joint recipients of the first World Sustainability Award. Jeffrey Sachs is a world-renowned economist and senior United Nations (UN) advisor and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Sonia Sachs is a paediatrician and public health specialist, and director of the Health Centre at the Centre for Sustainable Development, also at Columbia University.

The joint recipients of the first Emerging Sustainability Leader Award are Dr. Esther Ngumbi and Dr. Xiaosong Hu. Esther Ngumbi is a postdoctoral researcher at Auburn University in Alabama USA and serves as a 2015 Clinton Global University Mentor for agriculture. Xiaosong Hu is a professor at the Chongqing University in China and specialises in automotive control systems and mechanical engineering.

The World Sustainability Award and the Emerging Sustainability Leader Awards are funded to encourage new initiatives and developments in sustainability with the ultimate aim of fostering the transition to sustainable practices and societies.

The World Sustainability Award is funded by the MDPI Sustainability Foundation, and included a monetary prize of USD 100,000 to Jeffrey and Sonia Sachs. The Emerging Sustainability Leader Award is funded by the journal Sustainability, awarded to researchers under 40, and included a monetary prize of USD10,000.

27 January 2017

6th World Sustainability Forum under way in South Africa

The Forum will showcase the work of internationally renowned researchers and include more than 150 presentations. During the conference dinner, the World Sustainability Award, associated with a US$ 100,000 prize, will be announced, as well as the Emerging Sustainability Leader Award, associated with a US$ 10,000 prize. The prizes are sponsored by the MDPI Sustainability Foundation and Sustainability, an academic open access journal by MDPI.

19 January 2017

Cape Town to Host the 6th World Sustainability Forum

Cape Town will host the 6th World Sustainability Forum at the Cape Sun Hotel on 27 and 28 January 2017. This prominent event, held for the first time in Africa, will include many illustrious South African and international experts, such as Her Excellency Graça Machel (Sustainable Development Advocate for the United Nations, Mozambique), Joyene Isaacs (HoD Agriculture Western Cape Government), Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia University, USA), Max Bergman (SRaM, University of Basel), Mark New (Pro Vice-Chancellor, University of Cape Town), Frans Swanepoel (FutureAfrica, University of Pretoria) and Francis Petersen (Vice-Chancellor-designate, University of the Free State). The Forum will provide a stage for national and international debates on sustainability in South Africa, the African continent, and about international perspectives on sustainability. It brings together researchers and representatives from government and the business sector to discuss a wide-ranging set of issues associated with sustainability, including food security, water and energy scarcity, mining, poverty reduction, climate change, and urbanisation.

The next few decades will be marked by profound changes in the relationships between global economics, national societies, and the environment. We have entered what some call the Anthropocene, an age in which human activity dominates the climate and the environment. These changes will have numerous consequences on societies around the globe. South Africa and Africa will play a central role, for better or worse, in creating opportunities and risks during these changing times as Africa is profoundly influencing and being influenced by global developments.

The adoption of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in September 2015 was accompanied by what insiders considered an optimism they have not experienced in relation to UN resolutions before. The relative efficiency in the drafting, the lack of trenches between East and West, or between North and South, and the unanimity of support of the 193 countries speak volumes. In stark contrast, sustainability seems to go against a changing economic and political tide, where waves of nationalism and protectionism from some of the most powerful countries risk the wellbeing of the rest of the world. The 6th World Sustainability Forum will enable fruitful exchanges, which sensitise South African and international communities to the global urgency and specifics of sustainability.

The Forum will showcase the work of internationally renowned researchers and include more than 150 presentations. During the conference dinner, the World Sustainability Award, associated with a US$ 100 000 prize, will be announced, as well as the Emerging Sustainability Leader Award, associated with a US$ 10 000 prize. The prizes are sponsored by the MDPI Sustainability Foundation and Sustainability, an academic open access journal by MDPI. The World Sustainability Forum is preceded by the Postgraduate Forum on Sustainability, which will introduce more than 100 young scholars from South Africa and the African continent to sustainability research. Both events are organized and sponsored by the University of Cape Town, the University of the Western Cape, the University of Basel, MDPI, and by the National Research Foundation of South Africa.

Contacts:

Scientific Matters: Prof Manfred Max Bergman, Social Research and Methodology Group (SRaM), University of Basel, Switzerland; Email: max.bergman@unibas.ch

6 January 2017

MDPI Supports the OA2020 Initiative

Open Access 2020 is an international initiative that aims to induce the swift, smooth and scholarly-oriented transformation of today’s scholarly journals from subscription to open access publishing.

MDPI is participating in the upcoming Berlin13 conference in March 2017, where we are contributing to the initiative by aiding in the design of the roadmap which will make OA the default publishing model.

19 December 2016

MDPI and Wellcome Trust Compliance

The Wellcome Trust has, for a number of years, required that the results of its funded projects are published in open access format. Recently it announced criteria that publishers must fulfil for publication fees to be paid by the Trust. MDPI is pleased to have been added to the list of compliant publishers.

Only publishers who have confirmed their compliance by 16 December 2016 will be eligible to receive payment of APCs by the Wellcome Trust as of 1 April 2017. For more information on the criteria and a full list of publishers that meet them, see here.

16 November 2016

World Sustainability Award - Final Extension

The deadline for the World Sustainability Award has been extended for one last time! You now have one more month to nominate an individual researcher, group or project! The final deadline for nominations will be December 15, 2016.

4 November 2016

MDPI Joins the United Nations Global Compact

MDPI has become a member of the United Nations Global Compact to support corporate sustainability and have committed ourselves to the ten principles associated with the Compact.

Sustainability has always been at the core of MDPI’s values, starting with the collection and preservation of rare chemical samples that started in 1996 and led to the first journal, Molecules. Sustainability has become one of our flagship journals and we have supported and organized several conferences and events based on Sustainability, including the upcoming 6th World Sustainability Forum. As a global enterprise, we see it as our duty to promote responsible practices that will ensure a bright future for our planet. Given this, the choice to join the Global Compact was an easy one and we will do our utmost to fully implement it.

3 November 2016

MDPI Now a Member of SPARC Europe

We are delighted to announce that MDPI has become a member of SPARC Europe, an organization that works for open scholarship in Europe, including support of open access publication.

As one of the few publishers to join SPARC Europe to date, MDPI looks forward to making a contribution that puts open scholarship on a positive and sustainable path. We fully support the goals of open scholarship that allow the largest number of people possible to benefit from work of researchers in all disciplines. We hope that our membership will enable us to work with other stakeholders to find the best possible solution.

2 November 2016

World Sustainability Award Deadline Extension

The deadline for the World Sustainability Award has been extended! You now have until November 15, 2016 to nominate an individual researcher, group or project!

18 October 2016

We are pleased to announce that the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain and Aalto University, Finland, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

12 October 2016

Institutional Membership Established with Iowa State University and the University of North Texas, USA

We are pleased to announce that the Iowa State University and the University of North Texas, USA, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

7 October 2016

MDPI at Open Access Days in Munich, 10-11 October 2016

Meet MDPI during the Open Access Days held from 10-11 October 2016 at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany.

The two-day event will feature experts from the open access sector, scientists from all disciplines, publishing representatives and supporters of scientific research and communication from libraries as well as research institutes and funding institutions. Join us!

For more information about the event and to see the program, visit the event webpage.

7 October 2016

Institutional Membership Established with the University of Sevilla and the University of Alicante, Spain

We are pleased to announce that the University of Sevilla and the University of Alicante, Spain have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

29 September 2016

Institutional Membership Established with the University of Delaware

We are pleased to announce that the University of Delaware, USA, has joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from this university will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

19 September 2016

Peer Review Week 2016

As an open access publisher indebted to the work of our peer reviewers, we are proud to support Peer Review Week 2016. As part of the week's activities and to celebrate this year's theme "Recognition for Review", MDPI will host two webinars that anyone can join.

These webinars will explore the role and value of reviewers and the recognition they receive from a publishers perspective, with examples from MDPI's experience in publishing nearly 80,000 peer reviewed papers, along with evidence from reviewer surveys. It will also touch upon potential changes in how review is carried out and tips for early career researchers who want to be involved in the review process.

For more information about all the activites taking place, please visit the Peer Review Week website.

6 September 2016

Institutional Membership established with Kansas State University and Northwestern University, USA

We are pleased to announce that Kansas State University and Northwestern Universty, USE, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

5 September 2016

Institutional Membership Established with University College Cork

We are pleased to announce that University College Cork, Ireland, has joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from this university will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

MDPI New Office Location

10 August 2016

Institutional Membership established with the University of Texas at Austin, USA, the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Poland and the University of Granada and the Compultense University of Madrid, Spain

We are pleased to announce that the following institutions have joined MDPI's institutional membership program in August 2016:

18 July 2016

Institutional Membership established with Louisiana State University and Florida State University, USA, Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland, University of Rostock, Germany, AGH University of Science and Technology, Poland and Southeast University, China

We are pleased to announce that the following institutions have joined MDPI's institutional membership program in July 2016:

12 July 2016

MDPI Moving to New Office Location in Basel (Switzerland) in August 2016

As of 20 August 2016, MDPI's new address in Basel will be:

MDPI AGSt. Alban-Anlage 66CH-4052 BaselSwitzerland

Telephone and fax numbers remain unchanged.

St. Alban-Anlage 66 was built from 1947 to 1948 and initially the home of the "Bühler AG", a book printing business.

21 June 2016

"Behind the Scenes of Academic Publishing—A Publisher's Perspective" - MDPI's Lecture at the University of Basel

From the 15-16 September, 2016, MDPI will run a course on Academic Publishing at the University of Basel.

In this two day workshop, MDPI will look in detail at the role performed by academic journal publishers and how they interact with academics. Ethical dimensions, what happens when problems occur and how the publisher coordinates all aspects of the submission process will also be covered.

For more detailed information about the program, trainers and registration please visit the course webpage.

14 June 2016

2015 Impact Factors Released

We are pleased to report the 2015 Journal Impact Factors in the latest Journal Citation Reports® Science Edition, published by Thomson Reuters in June 2016. Twenty out of 25 journals have seen an increase in their Impact Factor and two journals (Crystals and IJGI) received a first Impact Factor. Coatings was recently added to SCIE and will receive its first Impact Factor in next year’s JCR.

23 May 2016

Institutional Membership Established with the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden and the South China University of Technology, Beijing University of Technology and Southern Medical University, China

We are pleased to announce that the following institutions have joined MDPI's institutional membership program in April and May 2016:

26 April 2016

New Section on www.mdpi.com - Latest Books

You may have noticed a new section that is now visible on our home page. This section is called "Latest Books" and showcases recent publications from MDPI Books, our book publishing service.

By clicking on the hyperlink "More Books" you will be taken to the MDPI Books Home Page. There you will find more information about the service, as well as the "Recent Publications" list.

Clicking on any of the book images in this list will take you to detailed information about that book (shown below). Here you can also download a PDF version of the book, or order a hardcover printed copy.

For further information about the MDPI Books service, please visit the webpage or contact books@mdpi.com.

24 March 2016

New Editorial Office in Barcelona, Spain

We are excited to announce the opening of our new editorial office in Barcelona, Spain. The launch team is led by a Senior Editor and comprises further staff holding doctoral degrees with several years of research experience. The new editorial team will help us to get closer to European research communities and progress Sciforum, the platform to support the scientific community via conference hosting and other functions. They will also help spread the word about Open Access and meet academics at scientific events.

We are in the process of hiring more doctoral and masters graduates to join the editorial team and welcome applications via jobs@mdpi.com. For contact details about the office, see our contact page.

22 February 2016

Membership Established with the Max Planck Society

We are pleased to announce that the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) has signed an agreement with MDPI to support authors associated with the Max Planck Society (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft). As of 22 February 2016, corresponding authors will receive full funding from the MPDL for articles published in MDPI journals, with a 10% discount applied to the Article Processing Charges. Additional details can be found at our institutional membership page.

Founded in 1948, The Max Planck Society is one of Germany’s leading research organizations, and is currently made up of 83 institutes conducting basic research in natural sciences, life sciences, social sciences and humanities. 18 Nobel laureates have emerged from its ranks of scientists and the society has more than 15,000 publications in scientific journals each year.

5 February 2016

Institutional Membership Extension: Wageningen University, CSIC, University of Zürich, ETH Zürich, University of Tübingen and Osnabrück University

5 February 2016

Institutional Membership established with Brock University, Canada and the University of Pisa, Italy

We are pleased to announce that Brock University, Cananda, and the University of Pisa, Italy, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges as of 01 February 2016.

25 January 2016

MDPI Sponsors diss:kurs with the University of Basel

MDPI is pleased to announce its newly established sponsorship of diss:kurs, an event coordinated by the University of Basel to support their doctorate program. For more information about the event and how to register, please visit the diss:kurs webpage.

7 January 2016

New Institutional Memberships Established with Tsinghua University, the Chinese Society of Micro-Nano Technology, Ruhr University Bochum and the University of Ulm

We are pleased to announce that the following institutions have joined MDPI's institutional membership program as of 1 January 2016:

Tsinghua University, China

Chinese Society of Micro-Nano Technology (CSMNT)

Ruhr University Bochum, Germany

University of Ulm, Germany

Authors affiliated with these institutions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

5 January 2016

Safety, Fermentation, C-Journal of Carbon Research, Magnetochemistry, Batteries and Horticulturae Released Their First Issue in December 2015

We are pleased to announce that MDPI's open access journals Safety, Journal of Imaging, Fermentation, C-Journal of Carbon Research, Magnetochemistry, Batteries and Horticulturae released their first issue at the end of December 2015.

23 December 2015

Happy Festive Season!

Season's greetings from everyone at MDPI!

17 December 2015

Institutional Membership Extension: University of Bern, Switzerland

We are pleased to announce that the University of Bern, Switzerland has not only renewed their institutional membership with MDPI after two years of successful cooperation, but also increased the reduction of the article processing charges (APCs) for affiliated authors to 25%.

17 December 2015

Institutional Membership with the University of Ulm and Helmholtz Zentrum Munich

Primary authors from the University of Ulm and Helmholtz Zentrum Munich will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges as of 1 January 2016. Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

9 December 2015

Membership Established with the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech)

We are pleased to announce that Virginia Tech has joined MDPI's institutional membership program. Authors from Virginia Tech will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges as of 1 December 2015. Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

1 December 2015

Membership Established with the Technical University of Denmark and the University of North Florida

We are pleased to announce that the following universities have joined MDPI's institutional membership program:

Technical University of Denmark (as of 1 November 2015)

University of North Florida, USA (as of 15 November 2015)

Primary authors from the Technical University of Denmark and the University of North Florida will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.